Although I visited TORn's home page multiple times a day since the summer of 2002, I don't think I registered for the forums till early 2004... and then I don't think I posted till quite a bit after that. I had a few other Tolkien homes that faded after the movies and I've been slow in reconnecting with a new forum.

I was given the label Magpie by my husband because of my incessant collecting of things: rocks, feathers, bark, grapevine tendrils, shells, seed pods, acorns, pine cones, Viewmaster slides, advertising fans from the State Fair, wooden handled kitchen tools, rooster kitchen ware, folk dolls, game pieces, paper ephemera, Golden Books, joker cards, small glass salt shakers, tins, marbles, vintage sewing supplies, bird figurines, and buttons. But the bulk of my collection is stuff that can't be categorized in any way but 'stuff a Magpie would pick up'. On a bulletin board I have pinned up: an old large clip advertising a company, a little red Pegasus from a Mobil station, a pixie charm from Cornwall, a big red plastic butterfly pin, skeleton keys and brass hardware from a drawer. I like the name Magpie and I think it suits me because, for me, life is full of bright, shiny things. And my real initials are MMM and I live in Minneapolis Minnesota. So I kind of got the M thing working.

Although I hadn't read the books since the late 60's, when I reread them in 2002 I became a bit obsessed with them. My obsessive tendencies toward sorting and organizing also prompted me to begin 'sorting' the music of the LOTR movies. Today, I have a large soundtrack website. Although I wrote obsessively about the book for a few years, I mostly hang out on movie. I kind of burned myself out on the more literary discussions. But I still love the book way more than the movie.

When I'm away from my computer, I teach English Country Dance, host community sings, and look for a job. The job part's getting kind of depressing. I live with three grown men (husband and college-aged sons) who are all geeky, techy and mechanical. For kicks, they built a 390 lb. combat robot and use it to bash other 390 lb combat robots. DJ Mix for Inaugural Celebration at: http://www.geocities.com/magpie930/music.htm